Video: The Messy, Dangerous Task of Cleaning Up After Dead Bodies

People die every day. Whether by natural causes, murder or suicide, the one thing you can count on is death. The unlucky ones die without family or friends surrounding them, alone. Inevitably even these forgotten corpses are noticed. Perhaps a neighbor notices a foul smell emanating from the house next door. The police arrive, then the coroner. Eventually the body is taken away.

But what happens then?

Who cleans up the potentially hazardous, biological mess that’s left behind? To find out, Wired followed Steri-Clean, a company that specializes in bio-remediation, including cleaning up after dead bodies have been removed from a scene.

The body the company was dealing with on this day had been dead for over a month. The smell was distinctive and unforgettably obnoxious. The garage was littered with dead cats and something that looked like a rabbit or a guinea pig. Its walls were covered in scratch marks, evidence of the forgotten animals’ desperation to escape.

The house was littered with animal feces. Dishes were piled in the sink. A bicycle stood up against the wall. One of the Steri-Clean crew opened the fridge and immediately shut it, but not before it added to the putrid stench. “This isn’t so bad,” they assured us.